Dads who spend quality time with their children may reduce behavioural problems, says study

Written By The Good Housekeeping Web team | 24 November 2016

Being emotionally involved pays dividends.

Dads who embrace fatherhood, who are more emotionally involved with their kids, and feel confident as a parent are less likely to children who suffer with behavioural issues, advises new research.

A new study by Oxford University looked at more than 10,000 children and parents and found babies raised by "confident" dads were less likely to grow up to have behavioural problems in the run-up to their teens. They discovered that a father's emotional attachment and strong bond with a childwas more important than their physical availability.

Maggie Redshaw, a developmental and health psychologist at the University of Oxford and co-author of the research says, 'It is the emotional connection and the emotional response to actually being a parent that matters enormously in relation to later outcomes for children.'

The researchers, writing in the journal BMJ Open, said that the findings of this research study suggest that it is psychological and emotional aspects of paternal involvement in a child's infancy that are most powerful in influencing later child behaviour and not the amount of time that fathers are engaged in childcare or domestic tasks in the household.

'How new fathers see themselves as parents, how they value their role as a parent and how they adjust to this new role, rather than the amount of direct involvement in childcare in this period, appears to be associated with positive behavioural outcomes in children.'

Data was taken from the long-running Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children in the south-west of England. Mothers filled out questionnaires about their children's behaviour at nine and 11 years, with questions probing a variety of issues including the child's attitudes towards other children, their tendency to restlessness, whether they were willing to share toys and their confidence in unfamiliar situations. Fathers answered surveys about their own attitudes and approach to parenting shortly after their child was born – including their emotional response to the baby, their confidence as a parent, and involvement in childcare and housework.

This along with attitudes to parenting and time spent caring for the children, helped to create the research stating that the emotional attachment on the paternal side 'appears to be associated with positive behavioural outcomes in children.'

However, the researchers say that the study relied on self-reported data and the men's attitudes to parenting could have changed over time. Nevertheless, they said it highlights the influence of parents' own feelings about their roles as mums and dads on their child's development.

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